Tracking Progress

I'm at this really annoying point in my skincare journey where my skin still looks kind of rubbish, but it is also about 8000 times better than where it was before I started.  I try to focus on the progress I've made rather than the fact that my skin still isn't perfect.

So, how do I do that?  So glad you (well, I) asked!

Three ways and you've already seen the first.  This blog is a major way of seeing my progress.  If I'm feeling bummed about the redness on my face, I look back to my first few posts and then I look in a mirror.  This, along with noting how much more slowly I'm going through hydrocolloid patches, are remarkably useful for keeping morale up.

I'm a teacher though.  We track data like it's going out of style whether we like it or not, so I've got two other things I do that are a bit more concrete.

First, in July I started a bullet journal.  I won't go into all of the things I do with my bullet journal (not much at the moment because starting slowly was one of the big tips I read to help make it a habit), but monthly tracking is definitely a commonality among most bullet journals and here is my first foray into monthly tracking:

You can see what I thought was important and which category I utterly failed at filling in.  For skin, I used a red, orange, yellow, green scale with red being the worst and green being the best.  The M's are for when I did a mud mask.  On the whole, I liked this, but I felt like it wasn't specific enough.  

As a side note, I had every intent of recording how much money I spent everyday.  This did not work.

The nice thing about the monthly tracking sheets is that they only last a month.  If something isn't working, change it.  For August, I used a rainbow scale.  Red is still the worst, but now purple is the best.  This gives me a bit more specificity.

I've also tweaked what I track.  Instead of a general skin category, I broke it down into skin tone and spots.  For spending, I'm rainbow rating it based on how I feel about how I've done with spending.  In case anyone is curious, I fill in the skin tone and spots columns in the morning and the spending and creativity in the evening.  Medicine is filled in with half a tick/check mark in the morning after I've done my morning meds and the rest of the tick/check mark in the evening after I've taken my evening meds.  I'll just put a box around the days when I'm having my period so I can compare it to the other categories and see what sort of impact it may or may not have.

If you've thought about bullet journalling before and get intimidated by the ridiculousness that some people do, know that you don't have to be a pinterest queen to make it work.  I spend about five minutes in the morning writing the date, something good, and a list of what I'm doing that day along with the tracking you've already seen.  In the evening, I mark what I've done on my list, write a few sentences about the day, do the tracking you've seen already, and fill in a rainbow rating of my mood for the day on the yearly tracking page.  My mood and period are all that I'm tracking on the yearly tracking page.  The evening journalling takes another five minutes or so and the total ten minutes have been really useful so far for keeping track of the positives and focussing in on what's important to me.  Unless I have loads of time or I'm bored, I don't worry about fancy lettering.

Bullet journalling isn't for everyone though, so I also have a free app recommendation.  It's one I really like evening if I haven't used it as consistently as I wish I had.  It's called You Cam Makeup and it's primary feature is an absolutely absurd virtual makeover camera.

It's ridiculous, but I've wasted about an hour of my life playing with it.  Seriously, give it a go.

Next to the makeup cam is the infinitely more useful skin tracker.

This analyses the quality of your skin based on spots, wrinkles, texture, and dark circles.  For each of these categories it gives you a rating out of 100.  Additionally, you get an overall rating and a skin age.  The useful bit is that it will save this data and give you a graph over time.

I've blacked out the picture, but for each date, it also saves a thumbnail of you that you can go back to just by clicking on the data point.  Right now, it looks like I've got a lot of up and down for this month.  I'm going to try to remember to snap a pic everyday and see if that smooths out a bit over time.

I've not yet compared what the app thinks of my skin to what I think of my skin, but, as I collect more data, I will.

So, there you go, that's how I track my progress.  If you have crap skin and are struggling to make it better, please, please, please, please keep track of your progress.  Skincare is not an overnight thing.  There is no instant fix.  Celebrating the little gains is the way to go.  If you've got another way that you like to keep track of progress, please leave a comment!